by Steve Bein
That, or a manager decided the lobby would look nicer if the camera were fifteen centimeters higher.
Obviously the second theory was better. Obviously the first one was a textbook case of paranoia. So why was Mariko so sure the first one was correct?
She knew of just two people who might have been able to help her answer that question. One of them was dead. The other was too busy to return her calls. Right then and there, she decided the second one had kept her waiting long enough.
Her phone told her it was eleven o’clock, late enough that it was impolite to call. She called anyway.
“Let me guess,” Han said. “There’s a spider in your apartment and you want a big strong man to kill it.”
“Yeah. You know any?”
“Ouch.” There was a little rasp to his voice, as if she’d just roused him from bed. She knew him well enough to know the opposite was true: he never went to bed before midnight, which meant he was probably still on duty toward the end of a double-shift.
She said, “You heard about St. Luke’s?”
“Mm-hm. You thinking what I’m thinking?”
“It’s him. For sure.”
An ambulance hissed by on rain-slicked tires, running neither lights nor siren. Mariko wondered who was in back, who was driving, whether anyone in there was going to test positive for ricin poisoning in the next day or two. But that was a rabbit hole she couldn’t afford to go down at the moment. Instead she asked, “Did you have a chance to read any of those notebooks I loaned you?”
“Yeah. I’ve been meaning to call you about them, actually. I have some thoughts to bounce off you.”
“Me too. Come down to Kabuki-cho and have a drink with me.”
“Ooooh,” Han said, “Kabuki-cho? I didn’t think you were into nudie bars.”
“Ah, what the hell. Maybe Kusama was right to demote me. Maybe I should explore new career opportunities.”
Han chuckled. “Then allow me to be your guide, my lady. I know all the finest establishments. I can meet you down there in—oh, shit. Mariko, I have to go.”
Mariko heard the squawk of a shoulder mic in the background. “What is it?” she said. “Are you at Terminal 2? What’s going on?”
“I—I have to go. Let’s do breakfast tomorrow. Eight o’clock?”
“Okay.”
The line went dead, reminding Mariko all over again that bringing down Sour Plum and Yuki was child’s play compared to the case she wished she was working. It wasn’t a comforting thought to go to sleep by.
14
Mariko wasn’t a morning person. She never had been. Her choice to be a makeup minimalist had nothing to do with fashion, nor was it a personal political statement about the double standard for men’s and women’s dress codes. It simply allowed her an extra five minutes of sleep in the morning. So it was a rare thing indeed for her to be happy to have somewhere to be at eight o’clock on a Saturday morning.
But this would be a good morning, because she got to spend it with the two men she trusted most in the world. Han met her at a high-top table for two at the window of a Mister Donut that overlooked the Blind Spot. Inevitably, he’d gotten there first—she’d slapped the snooze button once too often—and thanks to his near telepathic familiarity with Mariko’s habits of mind, he’d ordered a steaming cup of coffee just as she liked it, timed so that the waitress delivered it to their table even as Mariko was walking up to the front door.
She saw Han already had a stack of yellowed notebooks on the table. Mariko had brought a few herself, tucked into the largest purse she owned. These slender booklets represented a tiny fraction of the reams of notes inscribed by Mariko’s mentor and sword master, Yamada Yasuo. Yamada-sensei had been the one to open her mind to the possibility of the paranormal. Usually Mariko didn’t go in for the X-Filesy stuff, but by now she’d accumulated too much evidence to ignore. She didn’t go in for conspiracy theories either, but it was Yamada’s notes on the Divine Wind that first put her onto Joko Daishi, even before the attempted subway bombing. She couldn’t help thinking that if only she’d read a little deeper, she could have prevented the Haneda attack.
She needed another pair of eyes roving over the notebooks, and that was why she’d drawn Han into this. She couldn’t imagine letting any other cop see this deeply into her personal life. It was all too easy to dismiss these notebooks as the ravings of a demented old man. In fact, Yamada himself had predicted just that. He’d published volumes upon volumes as a history professor, yet he’d never submitted a single article on the cryptohistory that so fascinated him. Japan’s top universities weren’t ready for cursed swords and magical masks. Neither were Japan’s police officers. Mariko was a detective; she believed only what the evidence allowed her to believe. If she ever let it slip that she’d witnessed swords that were something more than inanimate matter—swords capable of imposing their will, for lack of a better word—then funny looks at work would be the least of her worries. The boys already made stupid jokes about whether or not she should carry a gun while she was on her period. Sincere doubts about her sanity would spell the end of her career.
Han was different. He and Mariko were partners—not ex-partners but partners in spirit, and neither one of them gave a good goddamn where some camera-mugging captain decided to assign them. That was why Mariko felt she could reveal the notebooks. It was also why Han felt he could speak plainly with her, with none of the polite deflections that were the hallmark of the Japanese language. His jaw dropped the instant he saw her face, and the instant Mariko saw his reaction, she knew why he was gawking. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten: she and Han hadn’t actually seen each other in the flesh since she got jumped. In Mariko’s case, the flesh was bruised in umpteen different colors.
“Holy shit, Mariko, what the hell happened?”
Mariko cringed at the volume of his voice. “Keep it down, will you? I told you the other day. I got hit in a fight.”
“Yeah, I saw your text, but … I mean, there’s getting hit and then there’s getting hit.”
“I guess this would be the latter.”
Han, still gaping at her, shook his head in disbelief. “I thought you said she hit you with her purse.”
“Yeah, well, she had something really fucking heavy in her purse.”
Mariko pulled out her phone, a newer model to replace the old flip phone she’d destroyed doing relief work at Haneda. It wasn’t top of the line, but the camera function worked well enough. The photo she showed Han wasn’t very clear, but it didn’t need to be; Han knew the demon mask by sight. “This,” Mariko said softly. “This is what she hit me with.”
He gave the little screen a closer look, then studied Mariko’s face, as if trying to replay how the mask must have struck her to leave the marks that it did. She could tell by his wince the moment he noticed the stitches in her scalp. “Please tell me you wrote ‘head-butted by demon’ on your injury report.”
Mariko laughed, relieved that he was ready to joke about it. That meant they could put any further conversation about her injuries behind them. “How are things coming with Haneda?”
“Never ending. This one’s going into extra innings for sure. That’s why I dragged your ass out of bed so early; I have to be back out there by ten o’clock.”
“It’s okay. I just wanted to talk about Yamada-sensei’s notes with you. I’ve been doing some reading—”
“Me too.”
“I figured. I was hoping we could kick around some ideas together.”
“Sure. Shoot.”
Mariko sipped her coffee. “You remember the first time I had you come to my place to read these books with me?”
“Of course.”
“Well, I think a lot of that stuff has to do with Haneda. Remember the stuff Yamada-sensei wrote about the Divine Wind?”
“Are you kidding?” Han bounced in his seat like a little kid. “How could I forget? A five-hundred-year-old ninja clan in my own hometown? That’s the coolest thing
ever.”
“Grow up, Han.”
That wasn’t going to happen. The best he could do was to slow the bouncing a bit. “See, I was rereading some of those notes too. I’ve got a theory about the woman who mugged you—”
“You think she’s a ninja.”
That stopped him short. “Uh … what?”
“You think she’s a ninja, because that’s what it would take to do what she did.” Mariko said it as if she were reading instructions from a recipe.
“No way. You think she’s a ninja too?”
“I think she received highly specialized training. As you’re so fond of reminding me, she kicked my ass. Hell, Han, she made it look easy. Plus—and here’s the part that really pisses me off—she outran me. I work harder at running than any other event in the tri. If you can out-swim me, fine. You out-ride me, fine. Even hit me in the face if you want, but do not fucking outrun me.” Mariko found herself leaning toward him, punctuating the last few words by stabbing her finger at him like a weapon.
“Uh, okay.”
“Sorry.” Her face flushed and she backed off a bit. Other patrons were staring, and the waitress looked like she was trying to decide whether or not to call the police. Mariko gave them all a weak, embarrassed smile. To Han she whispered, “Sorry. Got a little heated there. It’s kind of a sore spot for me.”
“I gathered that, yeah.”
Outside, a gaggle of teenage girls passed by wearing identical Burberry scarves and black Bulgari backpacks. Half of them chattered in rapid conversation while the other half walked head down, entranced by their phones. “Are you seeing this?” Han said. “I can’t believe their parents allow them out of the house in skirts that short.”
“Stop staring, Han.”
“What are they doing up so early, anyway? When I was in high school, Saturdays were for sleeping in.”
“Who knows? Giggling. Texting. Whatever teenagers do. Hell, these days they probably share tips on how to give a better blow job.”
“Oh, how times have changed,” Han said. “And oh, what I wouldn’t give to be in high school today. Do you know how old I was when I got my first—?”
“We’re not having that conversation.”
Han laughed and scratched the back of his head. It called Mariko’s attention to his short hair, which she still hadn’t gotten used to. “Sorry,” he said. “Back to your ninja chick. I think someone sent her after you, and I don’t think it was Joko Daishi.”
“Seriously? You think this was a hit?”
“Maybe not a hit exactly, but maybe she was sending a message. The important part is that it wasn’t from Joko Daishi.”
“How do you figure?”
“He went to great lengths to steal this mask, neh? Like, from the most bloodthirsty yakuza in Tokyo.”
“Yeah.” Mariko could picture his face: the Bulldog, Kamaguchi Hanzo, brutal even by the standards of organized crime.
“Okay,” said Han, “so Joko Daishi steals the mask, and a few days later we arrest him and he loses it again. A few days after that, we lose the mask to the Bulldog, and not long after that, the Bulldog sells it back to Joko Daishi. Now he thinks he’s got his hands on it for good, but then bam, some crazy chick in a nightie steals it.”
“And then tries to take my head off with it. Thanks for reminding me.”
Han winced. “Sorry. But here’s my point: look at the timeline. Tuesday morning: Joko Daishi makes bail and reclaims his mask. Tuesday afternoon: he commits the worst act of terrorism this city has ever seen. Wednesday morning: you’ve got his mask flying at your head because some whack-job ninja chick is trying to beat your brains out with it.”
“Huh.” Mariko was a little ashamed she hadn’t thought of it that way before. “So either she found him within hours of the bombing—”
“Or else she had already insinuated herself next to him and she was just waiting for the right time.”
“Or for the right orders. Han, I don’t think she’s operating alone.”
Han blinked and shook his head as if a tiny flash-bang grenade just went off in his brain. He sat back in his chair and considered the implications of what Mariko had said. Mariko did the same. She hadn’t consciously recognized the idea until she blurted it out. Now she had to wonder: if her assailant was being handled all along, who was the handler? Not Joko Daishi, to be sure. The mask held holy power for him; he wouldn’t give it up easily.
That meant someone stole it from him. That was a staggering thought. His Divine Wind cult had operated invisibly for years. They’d carried out murders, sold huge quantities of narcotics, amassed precursor chemicals to make bombs and drugs, all under the radar. In fact, the first time they’d drawn any attention from law enforcement, it was by wheeling fifty kilos of high explosives into the Tokyo subway system—a disaster Mariko managed to avert by a few tenths of a second. Yet this woman in white had not only found this invisible cult, but she’d stolen its holiest relic. How?
“All right,” Han said. “What if we assume it takes a ninja to find a ninja?”
Mariko rolled her eyes. “Should I just go buy you some ninja action figures? Would that make you happy?”
“No, seriously. Hear me out. One: Joko Daishi was a ghost to us, but your friend the mask-swinger found him, like, instantaneously.” He counted off each point on his fingers. “Two: she’s got higher-ups, people who can put her just where she needs to be. Three: in the notebooks, the old man refers to both—”
“He has a name, you know.”
“Sorry. Professor Yamada. He doesn’t always refer to the Divine Wind. Sometimes he just says the Wind.”
Mariko remembered that. Before she’d ever met Joko Daishi, she had read Yamada-sensei’s musings about the Wind and the Divine Wind. Mariko had been operating under the assumption that they were two names for one syndicate. If that syndicate was over five hundred years old, as Yamada surmised, it wouldn’t be so strange to adopt a name change now and then.
But now Mariko questioned that assumption. She’d seen no evidence whatsoever of a second shadow group in Tokyo, but clearly someone was interfering with the Divine Wind’s plans. Someone had put the mask in Mariko’s hands—not Han’s, not Sakakibara’s, but hers alone. Why?
“Okay,” she said, “let’s say the Wind and the Divine Wind are separate organizations—”
“Separate ninja clans.”
“Whatever. Suppose the Wind is fighting the Divine Wind. What’s their end game? Why send the woman in white after me?”
Han threw up his hands. “That’s the part I don’t get. If she was supposed to kill you, she sure did a lousy job of it.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“You know what I mean. Of all the murder weapons she could have picked, a metal mask in a shoulder bag? Seriously?”
“Okay, good point.”
Han looked pensively at the ceiling and scratched his cheek where his big, curly sideburn used to be. “Okay, let’s rule out the possibility that this was an attempted homicide. What else would give her motive to jump you?”
“If I knew that, we’d have solved this a long time ago.” She watched a pair of pigeons swoop in for a landing right in the middle of the Blind Spot. It would have been convenient for the woman in white to make an appearance just as suddenly. Mariko had plenty of questions for her.
Han followed her gaze. “What do you think is over there?” he asked. “In the Blind Spot? What’s being hidden?”
“My best guess? A doorway, maybe to a safe house or something. Or maybe it’s a dead drop. Or some way to leave secret messages in public, something no one would figure out if they saw it just once, but maybe they’d pick up on if they had some backlogged tape to study.”
“Okay, back to the other thing. We’ve got an unknown assailant, attacking you for unknown reasons, with no perceptible motive, and disappearing to an unknown location, also for reasons unknown. Is that pretty much where we are?”
“You mean fucked? Yeah.”
The sight of them suddenly wakened a memory in Mariko’s subconscious: a black-and-white image of matching shoes and matching socks on matching skinny legs. Where had she seen it? On a CCTV feed. In fact, on the love hotel’s CCTV feed; that was the only one pointed so low that it would capture just the legs… .
“That’s it!” Mariko said. “Come on. I know how we’re going to find where that bitch went to ground.”
They quickly paid their bill, and Han had to hurry to keep up with Mariko. “Where are we going?” he said.
“To see the girls you wished you went to high school with. No asking for blow jobs.”
She expected some witty repartee, but Han was too confused. “Do you mind telling me how a random group of girls suddenly became persons of interest?”
“I think they were here the morning after the bombing. At exactly the same time your favorite ninja chick was here.”
“What?” Han thought about it for a second. “No way. That was a Wednesday. They would have been in school.”
“Nope. All the schools were closed. Citywide.”
